


Never Kept a Dollar Past Sunset

by neverfaraway



Category: 1960s Music Scene RPF, Swinging London RPF, The Rolling Stones
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 09:09:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3405131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nellcôte, 1971. The sun is bleeding out into the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Kept a Dollar Past Sunset

**Nellcôte, 1971**

The sun is bleeding out into the sea. Orange death is on the horizon. Gram’s passed out in a chair, which makes a change from under a table, and he’s making these far out noises like he’s fucking dying – must be whatever Tony brought back from Marseille; Moroccan, Algerian, stuffed in souvenir camels in the boot of his Jaguar. There’ll be a row when Mick realises Gram’s brought the smack in again, that he’s let the dealers sniff around and sink their claws into Keith.

Anita’s pregnant, Bianca’s about to pop – everyone’s fecund and fruitful. Thank Christ Mick Taylor’s not let Jagger near him again, or he’d be up the duff by now, with his soft lips and his sad, pretty eyes.

Keith likes to turn his back on the lot of them and lie on the verandah like a lizard in the sun; he’s got a stretch of white skin below the belt and an acre of nut-brown above. He’s caught Mick’s eyes on him. It’s always satisfying to send Mick on his way with a hard cock and a frown on his face.

*

The whole week’s recording has been an expensive waste of time. Charlie’s AWOL – no one knows why, perhaps it’s getting old, driving from the farm to wait five hours for someone, anyone, to be sober enough to lay down a track. Bill’s sulking, and Taylor’s been keeping out of it, turning up every night at sunset then disappearing again come the morning with Rosie on his arm. Jagger’s been like a wasp in a bell jar. 

As for Keith, it’ll only be a day or two before Mick snaps and throttles him. Keith would probably welcome it, the fucker; he’d probably sit there smirking round his joint while Mick squeezed the air out of him. 

Gram’s out on the verandah wearing nothing but his pants, legs folded under himself like a child. His expression is openly adoring and Keith encourages it, the little tart. To Mick, it looks ugly and squalid; his stomach lurches, painful with loathing.

Keith glances away from the guitar cradled in his lap and meets Mick’s eyes through the open doors. His mouth twists and curls, not unpleasantly; it could be a private, remembering smile. Then his gaze slips sideways and he murmurs something to Gram, and the pair of them laugh. 

Mick longs to get Gram out of his sight, to march outside and shove him right off the balustrade. They’re not even his own trousers, he realises furiously, watching Gram unfold himself and cross his legs at the ankle, striped material too tight, stretched obscenely over his thighs. He’s wearing Keith’s clothes, and hanging on Keith’s shoulder, and whispering things in Keith’s ear that make him croak and caw with laughter.

Come the end of the week, Mick will be making a grateful retreat to Paris, where Bianca is waiting for him, her belly ripely swelling. He turns his back on the scene on the balcony. Gretchen passes him in the doorway; her eyes are pink and small, and she’s got her tiny mouth pushed into a pout. The tracks on her spindle arms are livid and grotesque.

*

When Brian came on the scene with his pretty smile and his trail of pregnant chicks, saying ‘Hey, man, this can be my band’, Mick had gone cross-eyed with confusion. Watching him wobble, jealous and wanting, between hatred and hollow-eyed lust, had kept Keith in stitches for weeks.

Brian was a complete fucking madman. Keith had looked at him and recognised a beautiful musical savant, but Mick had only seen competition. He’d turned it into a mean little war, one he’d ultimately won, because he had a heart of pure, cold stone somewhere underneath it all. Brian became an empty edifice built entirely of beads and pills, a junkie hiding behind all that hair, and eventually he shattered, collapsed in on himself. Keith’s seen plenty of fucked-up people using the smack as a crutch, and it’s eaten them up, one by one. It’ll probably eat up Gram, too, and Marianne, sitting on her fucking wall in Soho.

Keith feels too fucking heavy. He hates thinking about this shit; news keeps rolling in about people he’s met, shared a joint with, shared a chick with. Meanwhile, the sky has bled out into the ocean and now the horizon is purple, darkening to bruised blue at the corners of his eyes. It’s high time for good little boys and girls to get to recording, and Charlie’ll be along any time to descend into the basement with whomever else can be rounded up. 

*

Keith had parked his car outside that fucking house for a week and a half, while inside they finished shooting _Performance_. 

Anita might have thrown Brian over for Keith, but she wouldn’t be doing the same for Mick; Keith enlightened him on this, some months after things had blown over, when they could bear to be in the same room again.

“You’re a square,” he said, as though imparting the wisdom of the siddhas. “You pretend to be cool, but you’re too desperate to stay in control. Anita wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“You’re fucking welcome to each other.”

This is how it’s always been with Mick and Keith. Their friendship had been too intense at first, their mutual regard had burned too brightly and too hot, and then Brian – someone more talented than Mick, to whom Keith looked for a different kind of stimulation – had appeared on the scene. They wrenched themselves far enough apart to let someone else in, and it turned things brittle and dangerous. 

*

It’s a rare evening that Keith isn’t upstairs scoring, or asleep with the needle in his arm. Tonight it’s warm and balmy, the wind smelling spicy and hot, blown in across the sea from the desert. Keith is on the terrace, joint in hand, feeling good about the world. Tonight, Mick’s still in Paris.

He takes a deep pull, feels his lungs burn, and blows a satisfying plume skywards. Through it, he sees Mick Taylor approach.

Keith wonders whether Taylor’s paranoid, whether the fact that everyone knows has made him jumpy. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes for a week after ‘Moonlight Mile’. At Stephen Stills’ place in Laurel Canyon, Claudia came out of a bedroom telling a tale about finding the pair of Micks in bed, laughing at how sweet they’d looked, all naked and soft, asleep. Stupid little twat’s been taking everything Tony offers him, as though out-doing Keith in this one respect will make him more worthy of Mick’s time in every other. 

Funny how the chicks are too cynical to expect much more from Mick than a swift kiss goodbye but Taylor, after it had all cooled off, had moped about looking like he’d had his pretty heart broken. It’s only a matter of time till he gives in, gives up; Micks’s doing all he can to help, hassling Taylor, making him feel like a whore. He’s even been chatting up Rosie, who’s a sweet, unhappy girl, forever crying on Astrid’s shoulder, begging Taylor to take her home. 

“Fucking off again?” Keith says, with a little wave for Rosie, who ignores him.

Taylor smiles tightly. “Nothing’s happening here.”

_Fuck you, too_ , Keith thinks, watching him go. He knocks back a Mandrax with a gulp of scotch and closes his eyes.

*

“You’re such a cunt,” Keith says with lazy satisfaction. “Aren’t you, Mick? You’re a cunt.”

Gram’s smirking and nodding, nodding and smirking, flicking fag end into a teacup, cross-legged like some fucking guru. 

Mick wishes he’d never screwed around with Anita, never let her murmur to him that he’s always wanted what was Keith’s, that he could have her and it would almost be the same as having him. She’s a fucking witch and she put some fucking voodoo curse on Mick the minute his dick got anywhere near her.

“Why the _fuck_ are you still here?” 

Gram smirks and nods and sways sideways in his chair. Taylor stands up and walks out, guitar in hand.

There’s a tin of tuna open, olive oil dripping all over the table-top, and Mick suddenly can’t stand the smell of it, can’t stand any of it anymore.

“It’s a fucking cesspit in here,” he snaps. “Can’t anybody open a fucking window?”

Keith’s laughing at him. 

“If that fucking junkie’s still here,” Mick says, much later, the following morning. “If that sack of shit’s still bringing dealers here, I’ll get you fucking raided. We’re recording in your fucking house, and you can’t make it down a flight of fucking stairs!”

*

They all watched Keith die in 1965 in Sacramento, the mic stand live and Keith thrown across the stage, blue fire and a crack like a gunshot. It had been a bad gig, a bad trip altogether, the girls even wilder than usual, sounding like they’d tear the place down with their bare fingers, baying for blood. They got back from the hospital and Keith was drinking rum and laughing, and Mick had felt sick and terrified and crawled into bed with his heart lurching in his chest. 

“Mick’s sick, man,” Keith had argued, looming over him, frowning, when Oldham insisted they move out and climb in the van. “No fucking way.”

So they’d stayed put, listening to the girls shriek and cry ten floors below. Keith had been swallowing codeine for his burned hands, and eventually sprawled, out of his mind, on the bed, his sweaty forehead resting on the pillow beside Mick’s. He’d breathed heavily all night: long, slow rasps of exhaled alcohol fug chased by shorter, sharper, needy inward gulps. Mick hadn’t slept.

He’s been to the far-out parties, watched film-stars play the Ouija board, dropped acid and seen a gigantic face in the sky over Primrose Hill. They’ve had the fucking maharishis telling them death’s just another trip, Lennon drying his tears over Epstein with mantras and marijuana and a needle full of valium. Primal Scream Therapy. This world they’ve been inhabiting is shitty and squalid and dark, and Mick is fucked if he’s going to let it get the better of him.

He arrives from Paris just as the sun’s setting, wearing a good suit, with Bianca fragrant and brittle on his arm. He finds the house quiet and hungover, Keith levelled out on the terrace with his eyes rolling back in his head. It disgusts him; he tells Keith so.

“Mick’s sick,” Keith says to no one in particular, pupils wide and black. “He’s so sick of us, man.”

In the silence that follows, Mick hears distant laughter from the house, Anita singing a nonsense song for Marlon. His eyes burn. Humiliation flares in his chest. Bianca makes a noise of impatience, one sharp-nailed hand tight on his arm.

“Fuck you, Keith,” he says.

The setting sun splashes sickening vermilion over Keith’s upturned face, and it’s clear he isn’t even listening.


End file.
